


Collared

by Vampyra142001



Series: A Lot To Learn [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Danny Fenton Needs A Hug, Like 'Clean your plate' kind of abuse for one scene, Otherwise just Vlad's usual physical and mental abuse, Pressured Eating, Trans Danny Fenton, Vomiting, and therapy, canon-typical abuse, fangs, lots of therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29704671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampyra142001/pseuds/Vampyra142001
Summary: Caught in one of his parents' inventions again, Danny is stuck with an obedience collar on. Vlad steals the controls in the hopes to use it to corrupt Danny to his side. Spoiler alert: His plans never work out as intended.
Series: A Lot To Learn [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2197905
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	Collared

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: If you have sensitivities about food, skip the first dining scene. It’s not being withheld, but challenges are still worth concern. Pressured eating. <><><> To mark the scene to skip if you’re bothered by it.
> 
> Also, I found it really hard to keep the feel of the show without things sounding too dark. Like, Vlad legit tortures Danny in the clone episode, but putting it into words makes it seem so much worse than the show did.
> 
> Beta: Roki

Collared

By Kelli Dalton

As was all too often the case, Danny found himself on the wrong end of one of his parents’ inventions. He’d simply walked into the lab to tell his father that dinner was ready and had been knocked off his feet by an object being launched from a machine.

“Oops, sorry, son!” his Dad had yelled and hurried over to help him to his feet.

Around the teen’s neck was a metal band. He tugged at it, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Uh, what’s this?” Danny wasn’t alarmed yet. It hadn’t shocked him or anything. As far as he could tell, he just couldn’t phase it off, which wasn’t unusual for his parents’ anti-ghost gadgets.

“That’s the Fenton Ghost Trainer. It’s supposed to make ghosts obedient. They can’t be bad if they’re doing what you tell them.”

“Great. Now get it off so we can have dinner.” He tugged at the collar again, trying to find a switch or something to open it back up.

“No can do, Danny boy. There isn’t a way to get it off because we never thought we’d have to release a ghost,” Jack paused, the main issue with that slowly catching up to him. “I’m sure your mother and I can figure out an override or something. At worst we can saw it off.”

Danny chuckled weakly and followed his dad upstairs to eat, still tugging at the collar. While he wasn’t at all worried that his parents would make him do anything stupid, going to school with such a thing around his neck… He’ll never live it down.

*

Unlike his father, Danny’s mother had been concerned, mostly because of the wasted tech. And Jasmine, well, she had been on Danny’s side to her usual extreme. Yelling about how this was going to traumatize him and ruin his youth wasn’t especially helpful in coming up with ideas on how to remove it.

That said, manually trying to remove it wasn’t going well either. After dinner they went back down to the lab and quickly discovered that most of the tools that could cut through the collar were too large or too dangerous to be used near someone’s neck. If he had been out to his parents about being half-ghost it wouldn’t be an issue, he could have gone intangible and they could have used whatever they wanted to cut it off. But he wasn’t, so he couldn’t let them.

“Well, Danny, I guess until we can figure it out, you should hold onto this,” his mom said, offering him a palm-sized cylinder with a button on the end.

“What’s that do?”

His father snatched it up before he could.

“It’s neat!” Jack bellowed. “Touch your toes!”

Danny immediately felt the urge to do just that. He hesitated only slightly before being driven to bend over and touch his toes. Well, that answered that.

“And this button administers a hearty shock!”

Maddie grabbed the control before her husband could press the button since the man had clearly forgotten who would be receiving the shock.

She handed the control to Danny. “It will also automatically shock the wearer if they fight a command too much. Which is why we’re giving you this so that nobody can command you to do anything while we’re figuring out how to remove it.”

He tucked the device into his pocket, glad that at least one of his parents had some thoughtfulness. At least he wasn’t having to deal with being under the control of someone like Walker, like Wulf had been. He’d have to talk to the other ghost about it at some point and see if that had ever been fully sorted out. Because, while the collar was definitely a good look for Wulf, if it still posed a risk, Danny was all for helping remove it.

“So… does that mean I can skip school until you guys figure it out?” he asked hopefully.

“Not a chance, son.”

“Sorry, Danny, but your education is more important than your fashion,” said Maddie.

Huffing, the teen headed up to his room. It had been worth a shot.

None of them noticed the tiny metal beetle blinking on the lab ceiling.

*

The next day at school...

“Nice collar, Fenturd. Where’s your leash?” mocked Dash.

Danny just ducked his head and kept moving. There were other jokes and comments made by the popular kids, but not none were worth responding to.

"Hey, man, after school we'll see about helping you get it off," soothed Tucker. "We don't have to worry about hurting you with a side grinder like your parents do."

"I almost wish you would anyway."

*

True to their promise, the trio beelined for Danny's house after school and went up to his room to strategize. Before they got to the door, a wisp of mist slipped out of Danny's mouth, putting the teens on edge. Cracking it open, they found Plasmius digging through his bedside table. Danny’s eyes widened as he figured out exactly what the villain might be looking for. He’d left the control at home so that nothing could happen to it at school.

Plasmius stood up, clutching his prize, right as Danny shifted forms and shoved the door open.

“You’re too late, Daniel,” purred the other half-ghost.

“Give it back, before I kick your butt back to Wisconsin!”

“You know, I don’t think that I will. I think you are going to SIT down.” Vlad looked pleased as punch as Danny dropped to his rear, proving that the villain knew exactly what he was doing.

“How did you find out?” demanded Tucker.

“No one in this house knows how to be quiet about anything.”

“Forget the how and just get it!” Sam snapped.

Both humans leapt over Danny and tried to grab the control from Vlad’s hand. He easily held it out of reach and casually swatted them away, sending them flying. Danny was up in an instant firing ecto blasts in retaliation. Clearly a command didn’t hold for much time.

The shots all missed as Plasmius dodged and stepped closer to the younger half-ghost. He looped an arm around Danny’s waist.

“Stop fighting,” Vlad ordered. And Danny did. No thrashing to escape his nemesis’ hold, no screaming, he just stood there glaring.

“Stop him!” Tucker scrambled for the Fenton Thermos. Even if they caught both, it would be better than whatever the evil half-ghost has planned.

“I think not.” With a flip of his cape, the half-ghosts vanished, leaving Sam and Tucker alone.

*  
It wasn't long before Danny was fighting to free himself from Vlad's grip. He started to charge a full body blast since he was too close to aim another ecto blast properly.

"Stop it, Daniel. Not another twitch from you until we get home."

His body went limp and Danny seethed with rage as he was settled over a broad shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Of COURSE his parents would put him in this situation and of COURSE Vlad would take advantage of it. And just because this wasn't the first time he was being controlled by someone, didn't make it any less terrifying. He had no doubts that he would escape and get his revenge, but what he would be forced to do until then is what scared Danny.

The only solace he could take as he was carried through the Ghost Zone was that the collar didn't hold any sway over his mind, just his actions. Freakshow's staff was worse in that regard because he had had no free will under the staff's control, no ability to plan his escape, no ability to even hope that his friends would come to his aid. Now he was free to hate and plot and decide which part of Plasmius to punch first.

He pretty much had it narrowed down to either a swift kick to the groin or a blackeye as they reached the villain’s home portal. Mostly it depended on how literal he had to take commands. Danny felt himself be able to smile the moment they crossed the threshold from the Ghost Zone into Vlad’s lab.

Lashing out with a foot, Danny dropped Plasmius that simply and used the opportunity to bolt for freedom. He made it as far as ground level before electricity surged through him, knocking him out of flight and making him tangible again. The teen collapsed to the entrance hall floor, stunned.

Plasmius rose through the floor, still slightly hunched from the low blow, the wretched control loosely held in hand. “That wasn’t very polite, Daniel.”

“Kidnapping kids isn’t polite either,” he hissed back.

“You’re far too old for such whining.”

“And you’re too evil to not expect to get hit there.”

The other half-ghost just scoffed and picked him up by his shirt front. Red eyes met green as Plasmius stared him down.

“You are going to be staying with me for a while. And I’m going to teach you how to use those powers of yours finally, Little Badger.”

Danny thrashed in Vlad’s grip, though it was mostly for show. He knew he couldn’t get away at this point, not with his nemesis ready to shock him again. Even without the threat of the control, he’d have been hard pressed to actually escape from the older half-ghost.

“Turn human,” Vlad commanded, changing forms himself.

Unable to stop himself, Danny changed back. He was set on his feet and patted condescendingly on the head.

“Come. We are going to have a peaceful dinner.”

Danny growled, but followed after. The older man’s game was still beyond him, but he was willing to bet that it still basically boiled down to wanting to sway him to Vlad’s side. Because that’s what it always was when Vlad wasn’t outright trying to kill him.

“You know they’ll come for me,” he warned.

“Your dear parents? No, you’re going to tell them that you wanted to spend some time with your Uncle Vladamir and that I’m going to help you with whatever ridiculous novel you’re writing an essay on now.”

“No, I mean my friends.”

The other half-ghost pauses for a moment to consider that before continuing on to the kitchen where a chef was finishing up some meat dish. Before the teens weren’t a huge threat as far as mobility outside of Danny being able to fly, but Sam had recently gotten a car to solve that exact issue and they could all drive.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that they’ll try. But that assumes that they know where to look.” Vlad grinned at him, before taste testing the white sauce ready in a pan. “And perhaps if you hadn’t reminded me so quickly they would have been able to get the drop on us. But now I have a timeline of how long it will take them to make their excuses and drive up here. So, thank you for that.”

Danny clenched his fists and grit his teeth. While he has no doubt that the villain would have thought of it eventually, it didn’t make him feel any less stupid for inadvertently helping the bad guy. The teen stormed off, out into the dining room and sat down with a huff.

It was only after he’d been sitting there a moment that Danny realized he hadn’t received a shock or some sort of restraining command for leaving. Vlad had trusted him not to escape. Perhaps ‘trusted’ wasn’t the correct word. Still, it almost made him feel as if he was playing into his nemesis’s plan if he wasn’t doing something that caused punishment. Even if what it made him hold back was his own manners and the knowledge that he’d have to put some more thought into what he did next. There was no reason to fight now and tire himself out without some end goal.

<><><>

Vlad stepped into the room and sat down at the head of the table, the chef coming in a moment later with a tray containing two plates of hot food, which were set down before each of them. Danny propped himself up on one arm and forked bites of broccoli into his mouth with his free hand. The villain frowned at his behavior.

“Sit up and eat properly.”

While Danny did sit up, he didn’t take another bite, causing Vlad’s frown to deepen.

“Either you haven’t been taught manners or my phrasing was too ambiguous.”

“Or maybe you’re just losing control already,” he said with a grin, deliberately taking another bite while continuing to hold his fork in a fisted grip, rather than a more normal way. There was slack in how he had to follow orders, which both of them could tell right from the start, but the issue would be who could figure out how to hold onto that slack more than the other person and figuring out how long any command could hold sway over Danny. Orders with a deliberate end seemed to hold longer, but it was quite doubtful that ‘forever’ was a viable end when open commands had short holds. He still wasn’t great at math, but he could count and he could certainly fool Plasmius about the timing of things again.

Vlad pointed a finger at him and zapped the pasta he was about to eat, turning it into ash. Well, he wasn’t exactly wrong about losing control. Danny shrugged and scooped another bite, ignoring the hint of charred taste left behind.

“For a rich guy, you have really bad table manners,” he said deliberately around a mouthful of food.

“Eat like you actually know what manners are.” It was an order and a test. Danny straightened up from the slouch he had sunk into and held his fork correctly. His bites were properly sized and his chewing was closed-mouthed. Vlad smiled triumphantly and dug into his own meal.

He ate most of what was on his plate, but didn’t completely finish it and set his fork down with a challenging glare.

“There’s no way that you’re full, you’re sixteen.”

“You’re right, I’m not. But I know that if I fly around a bunch after eating over a certain amount, I WILL throw up,” argued Danny.

The older man stared at him for a moment, gauging whether or not he was bluffing. “Eat.”

Welp, it wasn’t his expensive furniture on the line.

*<><><>

Out in the courtyard, the pair of half-ghosts sparred. It wasn’t nearly as intense as their usual fights, because there wasn’t something else on the line. No parent in a trap, no device threatening to blow up, just Danny’s freedom vaguely hanging in the balance. Plasmius was getting frustrated by the younger half-ghost’s lack of attacks, but ordering Danny around defeated the point of the fight.

“Why won’t you fight me?” demanded Vlad as he snatched Danny out of the air and slammed the teen against a wall, holding him at eye-level.

Danny held up a single finger and then promptly vomited down Plamius’s front. “Oh, fudge sticks.” That was one way to end a sparring match.

*

Curled up in an all too plush bed, Danny tried to fall asleep, knowing that there was some sort of surveillance on him to prevent him from leaving overnight. At least he could be sure that Sam and Tucker were on their way. He’d already figured they would be, but the short conversation with his dad had confirmed it. As far as his parents were aware, he had left to get Vlad’s help with a report and his friends were travelling north to bring him something he’d forgotten for said report. If only they weren’t so trusting, they would be the much bigger threat to Plasmius with their Fenton Mobile.

He sighed and rolled over. Once the weekend was over, his parents would surely start questioning then when he wasn’t brought back for school. That didn’t guarantee freedom, but it meant that help would eventually find him. Danny forced himself into a light sleep, knowing that tomorrow would be a mess.

*

“Rise and shine, Daniel!” greeted Vlad cheerfully as the villain flung the curtains open.

Normally, he would have just rolled away from the light with a groan, but the ‘rise’ part was too close to an order to be ignored. Danny half-floated into a standing position, the blanket still wrapped around him, and yawned widely.

“Once you’re done getting dressed, we’re heading out. I assume you can eat and fly without a repeat of yesterday?” The question was asked with a mixture of mockery and concern.

“It’s not my fault you didn’t think to phase it off before turning human,” he slurred sleepily.

Vlad just scoffed and then frowned at him, clearly waiting for something.

“If you think I’m going to change clothes with you in the same room, Fruitloop, you’re out of your mind.”

The older man walked out of the room, muttering defensively. While Danny wouldn’t have trusted Vlad in the same room as his mother, he did not have the same fears for himself. Mostly it was that his morning routine was private, kidnapping or not. The last thing he needed was his enemies knowing what else he was half of.

*

Breakfast was some sort of homemade oatmeal bars. Whatever they were made of, Danny was going to have to ask the chef for the recipe so that he could pass it along to his mother. Who knew rich people had good travel food?

He’d half been expecting them to fly to Vlad’s mountain chateau in Colorado, which would have been a time consuming flight even at their speed. Thankfully, that was not the case. They flew north for only an hour or two before coming to a different chateau, this one clearly being an expensive rental rather than Vlad’s personal space. It boded well for him because it meant that the place couldn’t be riddled with cameras. And lower security meant more chances for freedom.

The other half-ghost seemed to hesitate before turning human and gesturing Danny inside. What on Earth could Vlad be second guessing at this point? Hopefully it was the decision to kidnap a sixteen year old kid and drag him out into the woods. Doubtful, being a villain and all, but it'd be nice.

"Bags down. We'll resume your training," stated Vlad. There was a note in the tone that left room for argument.

Danny dropped his school backpack and rolled his shoulders. While he had secretly lightened the load during their flight, it didn’t change the fact that school textbooks were heavy. "You know, if I had known that barfing on you was all it took for you to start treating me like a human being, I'd have done it years ago."

"It's more that I haven't had to take your limits into consideration."

"It's almost like that's a major factor when you want someone in your life," Danny said snarkily and marched outside.

Vlad paused, catching the jab at his failed attempts at a family. When the older man did join Danny outside, his expression was sour.

"Fine then, let's find all of yours." The evil half-ghost shifted forms, a fistful of pink ecto-power forming.

The teen swallowed thickly and changed forms too, barely dodging the first blast aimed at him. Danny didn't hold back the same way that he had the night before, he actually did fight back, but he definitely wasn't going all out. Not until Vlad ordered him to. Danny took a deep breath.

The broken swath of trees and Plasmius's crumpled form on the ground showed proof of what his ghostly wail was capable of. He chuckled weakly before collapsing himself and switching back to human as he passed out.

*

Danny woke up on the couch of the new cabin. On the coffee table in front of him was a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of water. Across the room, with an ice pack on his head, Vlad was reading a book.

"I suppose that answered your question?" he rasped, reaching for the water.

"One of them," the other half-ghost admitted. Vlad closed the book and settled in a closer chair. "I don't have that power, so how is it you do?"

Danny shrugged and took a bite of a sandwich. "I don't know. Like most of my powers, I just kind of did it one day in a fight. Unless I'm trying to learn a power I've seen, I sometimes just manage to do stuff and fine-tune using it later."

"How did you learn yours?" he asked around a fresh mouthful.

"While training and hunting, I suppose." Vlad looked very thoughtful. "You struggle with powers you're trying to imitate, like duplication?"

That hadn't been his phrasing, but it wasn't exactly wrong, so Danny nodded.

"And others just manifest at full strength under stress?"

He nodded again, slower. It wouldn't be beyond Plasmius to decide to nearly kill him just to see what happened.

"I can't tell if I'm jealous or not," admitted Vlad.

"Why?"

“Because it sounds terribly unpredictable to never know what you can do. But on the other hand, you certainly have a wider range of abilities than I do, even if mine are a little more… practical.” By that, the villain no doubt meant the applications on the human side of things. “Worse still, I can’t tell if your ability to gain powers is because of your lifestyle, your age, or if it’s because you got a higher dose of ectoplasm in your accident.”

“Lifestyle.” Danny’s answer was immediate, which caused Vlad to raise a brow at the confident answer. Said confidence withered under the knowledge that he now had to explain.

“And what makes you so sure of that?”

“Let me start this off with: Do not order me to explain further. There might be consequences for both of us if you do.” He had the older man’s full attention. “So… let’s just say that I got drawn into some time-bending craziness and met an older, evil version of myself. Even though he was ten years older than me at the time, he had only just mastered the wail. After I saw him do it, I immediately could. So as far as I could tell, because he hadn’t had to struggle in years, he didn’t have the push to learn things fast.”

“You were evil?” Danny could hear the confusion, the desperate want to ask for more information.

“It’s a little complicated and I’m leaving out some huge details, but my ghost got ripped out, he ripped out your ghost and they merged together into something neither of us could be. But, hey, that means that maybe you can do the wail too, since some version of you could?” He grabbed another sandwich to distract himself.

“Wait. How does that- You can’t just-” It was clear that Vlad believed him about the consequences, but it didn’t make restraining himself any easier. “Can I ask what happened to us? Without our ghost halves?”

“If you’re asking whether we survived having them removed, technically yes. Less technically, you survived, but he killed me pretty much immediately. That version of you put it as ‘Some things are better left unsaid’.”

“The evil you killed…?” Nod. “And are you implying that I wouldn’t be capable of such things when you said he was something neither of us could be?”

“You’re evil, Vlad, but you’re not destroying entire cities evil.”

That shut the older man up. Danny wasn’t exactly pleased with the thoughts that had to be running through his nemesis’s head, but perhaps some perspective would do Vlad some good. It was so tempting to tell the other half-ghost what that older Vlad had said, but even he knew it would do more harm than good to blurt out the end result of a hard life lesson. He finished his lunch quietly, occasionally glancing at the other man who was just sort of glaring off into space.

Danny had to clear his throat loudly, to get Vlad to come back to the present. The villain blinked at him, slow to focus.

“Well, let’s get back outside, if you’re done.”

“I can’t.”

Vlad frowned. “Of course you can.”

“You wanted my limit, I’m there. A nap and some food doesn’t magically make me able to do it again. I don’t have the, the-” He flailed a hand, his C grade vocabulary failing him.

“Stamina?”

“That!”

“Then you’re going to work on it.”

The older man snatched him up off the couch by the back of his collar and pitched him out onto the lawn. Danny tumbled gracelessly across the ground, but was in his ghost form by the time he came to a stop.

“Attack me,” commanded Plasmius.

Danny fought the urge, knowing that it wouldn’t amount to anything. He could tell where his reserves were and they were far lower than he usually let them get. After a moment, a shock coursed through his body without his nemesis touching the collar’s control at all.

“Attack me,” the other half-ghost repeated.

He automatically rose to his feet, but when he didn’t move forward, the teen was shocked again, dropping him back to his knees. Black booted feet appeared before him and Plasmius grabbed his chin roughly to tip his face upwards.

“How is it that you don’t have the energy to battle me, but you have the energy to fight me?”

The answer was that it was two completely different reserves, but Danny’s response was to bite Vlad’s hand.

“Ah! You little rat!” He flung the younger half-ghost away and clutched at his bleeding hand.

They both paused for a moment, realizing that flat, human teeth could not have punctured leather gloves. Danny wiped at the green dripping down his chin, staining his white glove. His eyes went wide and he pawed at his ears and hair, making sure nothing else had changed.

Plasmius grabbed the teen’s face again, mid-scream, forcing his mouth open, so that his new fangs could be inspected. He knew they looked like, four sharp canines, he just hadn’t expected to get them. Like, at all. Danny slapped the other’s hand away.

“Get away from me!”

“You really have survived by pure willpower and dumb luck, haven’t you, Little Badger?” Vlad’s bitten hand had already stopped bleeding and was healing up, but it didn’t change how impressed he was. “I’m going to guess from your little freak out, that you were expecting more to happen?”

The younger half-ghost nodded and ran a hand through his hair again, reassuring himself that everything was normal. “He had pointy ears and not flame hair, but flowy… ghostly.”

“He? The evil you?”

Danny didn’t answer, but clearly he didn’t need to. Vlad, now human, roughly pulled him up from the ground by his upper arm and walked him inside.

“I was several years into things before I got my fangs,” admitted the older man, once they’d settled back into their previous seats. “Though I believe mine was more of an aesthetic choice, rather than an impromptu weapon.”

“Did you choose the blue skin, too? Cause I gotta admit it looks a little weird.” Now that he wasn’t panicking or being attacked, Danny took a moment to play around with his fangs and managed to get them to exist on his human form temporarily. His first thought was how funny it would be to scare Dash with them. His second thought was whether or not Sam would like them.

“No, it’s been that way from the start, like your hair.”

“If you can choose your looks, maybe you should reconsider that,” taunted Danny.

“I don’t think so. Unlike you, I can pass while in the Ghost Zone. I’m not immediately outed as a half-ghost.”

To most people that wouldn’t have hurt at all, but Danny wasn’t most people and that cut deep in a way he wasn’t about to explain to his nemesis. Instead, he laid down on the couch with his back to Vlad and settled down to sleep some more.

*

That evening found the pair of enemies outside again. Plasmius was pushing Danny to show him all of the abilities that he hadn't actively been attacked with. To say that the older half-ghost wasn't impressed by Danny using ghost powers to make a flashlight was something of an understatement.

"You can't see in the dark?" Vlad's tone was incredulous.

"Not much better than my human form. But…" With a little bit of focus, the glow turned into a flash bomb, blinding the older man.

Not sparing a second, Danny darted off into the trees. It wasn't ideal with where his energy still was, but the point was to get out of range of the control, not to fight.

He got further than he thought he would before the electricity hit, knocking the teen out of flight. The impulse to go back was strong, almost as strong as the pain of the continued shocks. Danny curled into a ball of misery, unable to move forward and unwilling to go back.

It took a long moment after the pain stopped for him to realize that he wasn't being shocked anymore. Hovering above him was Plasmius with an unreadable expression. The villain said something, but Danny couldn't hear the words over the ringing in his ears. He could feel the pull towards Vlad and the cabin, though, and he wasn't about to obey after all that. The teen turned away, ready for the shock that followed.

The next moment that he could think at all, Danny realized he was draped over Plasmius's shoulder again. His groan alerted the older man that he was at least somewhat alert again.

"I'm beginning to think that you're a masochist, Little Badger."

"Wuzat?" he slurred.

"Someone who enjoys pain."

Even Danny wasn't sure exactly what he mumbled, just that it was somewhere in the realm of a denial.

He expected Vlad to let him rest again. The couch sounded like a haven, even if being there usually involved conversations too deep for his comfort. So he was very confused and frustrated to be dropped on the lawn instead.

"You seem to be under the delusion that your little stunt has earned you a break. We're not done yet, Daniel."

He didn't even have the excuse of being out of ghost power, they both knew he was drained in a different way and that was the point.

"Get up. And show me how that trick works."

Through their training, Danny had figured out that 'and' was a problem for the collar, which meant the second part of an order using 'and' was entirely optional. Whether or not Vlad had figured it out too, he didn't know, but he'd been playing along to hide that freedom.

The younger half-ghost slowly rose to his feet and started making his hand glow again. "It's just a modified ecto-blast." The light flared brightly again, though not nearly as intense as what he had aimed at Plasmius before.

"I can also use a modified version of it to knock ghosts out of people," stated Danny, his hand glowing with a shapeless blob of energy. He didn't reach for Vlad, but the implied threat was there. "If you were to say, overshadow my dad again, I wouldn't have to jump in to fight for control, I can just knock you out of him."

"What else?" asked Plasmius.

Danny wracked his brain, trying to think of what else his nemesis might want to know that he could do. Whether it was the exhaustion or that he'd just run out of ideas, the teen shrugged. "I don't know. Anything else you've either seen or I've done on reflex once and don't know how situational it was."

The older half-ghost hummed in thought.

"How fine can you make your ghost ray at a distance?" Vlad gestured at a bush a ways off.

Pointing a finger, Danny assumed the idea was to lop off single branches. Even the more experienced of the two didn't have the finesse to cut individual leaves off. He'd only fired off a couple shots when there was suddenly a squeal.

"Oh, no, Daniel, it sounds like you hit a defenseless animal," said the villain in mock surprise.

Danny spared a glare at Vlad, knowing his nemesis had set him up, before rushing over to the bush. Sure enough, there was a rabbit, stunned, but not dead or seriously hurt. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Plasmius drifted up next to him, deliberately too close, hemming him in.

"You should finish it off." It wasn't an order. Yet.

"I won't!" bit out the teen, knowing what was coming next.

"Kill it."

"I won't!" Electricity surged through Danny again, dropping him to the ground.

"If you don't, I'll just keep shocking you." The controller was now in Plasmius's hand, so that the villain had control over the shocks directly without having to repeat commands.

"No!" Another long shock.

"It's just a rabbit."

"It's a life."

"How is that different than the ghosts you've killed? The clones you killed?"

He didn't have a good answer for that, but he knew they were still fundamentally different.

"You can't make me." An exceedingly long shock followed.

"Oh, I think I can, Little Badger. You know the pain will drive you mad."

Danny knew he was able to be broken, he'd seen the results. It didn't matter that that was emotional pain and this was physical. Broken Danny made bad life choices and he wasn't about to let that happen in any form.

He started to charge a blast in his hands, prompting another shock. Except the younger half-ghost didn't let the agony stop him, he pushed his power into the electricity and grabbed Vlad's ankle, sharing his torment.

The older man screamed and the shock abruptly stopped. Plasmius swayed on his feet, looking a little toasty.

"We'll call that a draw," Vlad wheezed.

It was only once the other half-ghost had turned to head back inside that Danny noticed the faint trail of smoke coming off of the control. Apparently, Plasmius wasn't the only thing that got fried. If his energy hadn't basically been blinking on empty, the teen might have used the opportunity to flee, but Vlad wasn't worn out, just hurt, so it wasn't worth the risk. Things would be better in the morning.

*

"You slept in your ghost form?"

Danny made a questioning noise and then yawned. He hadn't had the energy to bother climbing the stairs the night before to find a bed or a blanket. It was either find bedding or sleep in his other form to avoid bruised ribs.

"Yeah, I've had to do it when I've gotten trapped in the Ghost Zone before. I've never bothered while on the human side, though," he admitted.

"Aw, did I scare you that much last night?" taunted Vlad.

"You know, not everything is about you." Danny brushed passed him, snagging his backpack and heading towards the nearest bathroom. The older man just stared after him, confused and vaguely insulted.

“So you’ve never slept in your ghost form. Ever. In over twenty years?” he asked around a bite of fried egg.

“I mean, I’ve accidentally fallen asleep that way, but I’ve always woken up human.”

“Try it on purpose sometime. But don’t be surprised if you have to put effort into shifting all the way back.” Swallowing, he cleared his mouth and Danny showed that his fangs were still there before he forced them back to normal. He hadn’t bothered before that because they hadn’t inhibited his ability to cram bacon into his face. “Sam has a theory that if I were to stay in ghost form continually for a long time, probably at least a week, I wouldn’t be able to turn back. That I would eventually just be a ghost.”

“I think she might be right. I’ve definitely felt points where it was harder to be human than ghost. But I just assumed that I was… being emotional at the time.” Vlad seemed wistful and Danny didn’t dare ask what the emotion had been, he had a pretty good guess.

Breakfast done, the teen wasn’t sure what to expect, just that he’d been looking for an opening the whole time.

“What torment have you thought of today?”

“Oh, now you don’t have to be like that, Daniel. It hasn’t been all bad, has it?” asked the other half-ghost in a fake, defensive tone. “We’ve learned so much together already in such a short time.”

“If you weren’t such a conniving jerk, we could have conversations like this regularly. No strings attached, no plots, just honesty.” Danny couldn’t hide the frustration in his voice. “I WANT to learn, but your cost is too high.”

“You think so?” The older man’s tone was too hopefully to be a question about the cost.

“Yeah. If you were to let me go and stop trying to ruin my life in one fashion or another, we could hangout regularly and compare notes or something.”

“And you don’t think that dropping all of my plotting is too high a cost for that?” Vlad’s tone was cold as ice.

“That’s not what I was asking for. I’m asking to be able to have a conversation with you and our interaction NOT be a part of some plot.”

“Ah.” That wasn’t an outright no. The other half-ghost laced his fingers together, frowning and staring off into space.

Danny waited a moment before slinking off to work on his book report. He had no intention of not being able to turn it in the next day.

He was a couple hundred words in, when Vlad joined him in the living room. Or was it the great room? Whatever rich people with too many rooms called a room with a lot of books and plenty of seating.

“How do I know this isn’t some desperate bid to escape me?” asked his nemesis.

Tapping his pencil against his notebook, Danny considered how to answer that. He decided to lay his cards on the table.

“Order me to put this pencil down.”

Vlad frowned and then his eyes went wide, flicking to the collar still around Danny’s neck. “How long?”

“It fried last night when you did. I could have left at any point this morning. I could have ambushed you at any point since then.”

One thing the weekend had proven was that Danny had Plasmius beat as far as variety, versatility, and even strength went. What Danny didn’t have was the stamina to back it up. The villain was losing ground every battle. And now that the control device was broken, there went the chance to tame the teen. That put them right back in the position of Plasmius eventually losing in a fair fight. They both had no doubt of where their current course would take them. And yet, here was Danny offering something of a truce despite that. Despite everything that had happened TO Danny over the weekend.

From outside, there was a blaring horn honk, followed by a black jeep tearing into the driveway and scraping noisily down the side of Vlad’s fancy car as Sam parked.

“Sounds like my ride is here,” Danny started tucking his homework back into his bag. “Think about it.”

Tucker and Sam hopped out of the vehicle, guns blazing. Well, Sam had a Fenton Blaster and Tucker had a thermos, but they were ready to FIGHT. Danny stepped outside before they could destroy anything else. They aimed their weapons at him, understandably wary.

“Easy guys, it’s broken. He can’t boss me around anymore.”

“Oh, yeah, they why aren’t you two fighting?” demanded Tucker.

“Because I’ve been given an ultimatum,” Vlad grumbled as he stepped into the cabin’s doorway.

“A what now?”

Danny waved the question off and continued towards them, Sam already lowering her weapon. “I’ll explain later. What took you guys so long?”

“Well, SOMEONE left the WORST trail of breadcrumbs ever.” She threw a small yellow package at his face, prompting him to dodge and laugh. “Also, these are so not environmentally friendly.”

“I didn’t know how far away we’d be flying, so I had to spread them out and assume that I’d need the whole pack.”

Vlad picked up the thrown object, frowning. “Tampons? Why would you have a backpack full of tampons?”

The human pair stared back and forth between Danny and Vlad.

“Seriously? You shared space with him for days and didn’t figure it out? Even DASH figured it out pretty quickly,” said Tucker.

The older man’s frown deepened at the mockery, clearly frustrated with his own lack of understanding. Danny shrugged, offering the permission for clarification subtly.

“Dude, Danny’s trans.”

“He’s-” The realization of all of the strange behaviors over the weekend suddenly making way more sense was written all over Vlad’s face. “Your ghost form isn’t.”

“Nope. Just like yours is way buffer than you are, our ghost halves are more of a reflection of who we see ourselves as,” he agreed. “But you just think about what else I said. That part can be another time.”

Danny hugged his friends when he got close enough, as they approached the car. “Oh, hey, check this out!”

“Fangs? That’s so cool!”

“Tell me you’re going to show Dash! I want to see the look on his face!"

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I'll admit I was less 'inspired' to write this fic and more 'so offended by another story that I had to fix it'. The tldr there being that I had read another fic that had this great obedience premise I'd never seen before and then was immediately let down by how they wrote they abuse cycles, opting to undermine their own setup by pushing for smut scenes that just didn't fit? Like, I am all for smut and that was clear where they'd intended to go with it from the start, but they just weren't following their own rules. And I just kind of launched into writing this, like, no, this is how you can break a person with this premise.
> 
> And, yes, I know Danny doesn't actually break in the end of this fic, but if the control hadn't fried, Vlad would have gotten his perfect son eventually.


End file.
